Lawmakers: White House Syria briefings a flop

Many inside the Capitol say the administration briefings were a flop. | M.Scott Mahaskey/POLITICO

California Rep. Xavier Becerra, chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, said the “evolving circumstances” in Syria have made it hard for the administration officials to clearly lay out scenarios for a Syria attack. He said lawmakers raise questions about the operational details of a strike, including the assets and artillery that would be targeted and the number of casualties the United States could expect.

“It’s those kind of questions where it’s tough to give precision,” Becerra said Wednesday.

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Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the Intelligence Committee chairwoman, was visibly frustrated by what she views as a clear attempt by congressional Republicans to “discredit” Obama — something she argued Democrats did not do in the run-up to the 2002 authorization of the Iraq War.

“I think it’s unfair to be candid with you,” Feinstein said.

Senior administration officials argue that they have held an unusually open dialogue with Congress to lay out the most compelling case that Assad used chemical weapons and that Washington had to act.

“The president acknowledged from the beginning that this would be a challenge,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said Wednesday. “We have presented a great deal of information to members of Congress, both in the House and the Senate, and we are continuing to do that today in briefings and will continue to do that moving forward. Congress has only been back in town for a day and a half.”

But at this point, the White House does not have majority support for the use-of-force resolution in the Democratic-led Senate, according to several Democratic sources, and the GOP-led House is an even tougher climb. To get to 60 votes to break a filibuster and 50 votes for passage in the Senate, Obama and his team will have to persuade enough Republicans to go along with the resolution.

That puts a senator like Susan Collins in the administration’s crosshairs.

But after spending three hours at Vice President Joe Biden’s home Sunday night for dinner and sitting through several other classified briefings, the moderate Maine Republican still has more questions about how the U.S. would avoid getting dragged into a protracted civil war in Syria.

“My concern that that may happen is heightened when the president and his advisers, in response to questions that I and others have raised about what would happen if Assad used chemical weapons again, even if there were a small attack, the answer from the administration has been that they would launch another strike.

“So where does it end?” Collins said.

Lawmakers who attended several of Biden’s briefings said privately that the vice president spoke almost uninterrupted for more than 90 minutes at the sessions, starting with a recounting of the evidence that Assad used chemical weapons and moving through the administration’s case for military action. He asked one set of House Republicans to keep an “open mind” on force, though he did not appear to win many votes in his briefings.

“It’s hard to say they did a good job because they don’t have a strategy that they’ve articulated not just to Congress, but to the American people,” said Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.).

Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), who has yet to take a position on the use-of-force resolution, said the briefings have yet to detail the reprisals that could occur if the United States were to engage in Syria.

“Nobody can give you any guarantees,” King said. “That’s why a briefing can’t be definitive because these are questions that can’t have definitive answers.”

But Manchin was able to come to a definitive answer on his own position. Manchin said the briefings “crystallized” that the administration lacked a “resolve” to take out Assad, there was no clear way to secure his chemical weapon stockpile, no guarantee that the airstrikes wouldn’t accidentally cause more collateral damage and no assurances that the Muslim world wouldn’t rise up and spark a larger regional war.